Resisting Trump and the Deep State

Hold onto your hats, including the pink, cat-eared Pussyhats that thousands of women are knitting to wear at upcoming demonstrations, representing their refusal to be demeaned by Donald Trump’s lewd remarks about women during the election. Trump’s policies, as well as resistance to them, are sure to provide a spectacle during the coming weeks, months, and maybe years. His election as president has unleashed forces of hate and indifference that threaten those who are most vulnerable, and he is appointing people to carry out his unjust and dangerous plans.

The resistance to Trump’s policies is just getting started. It will be strong and it will be sustained. But we will also need to focus on the system that brought Trump to power. As despicable as his words and actions have been, as president he will be the figurehead of something deeper and more sinister—of what Mike Lofgren calls The Deep State, a “shadow government” that dominates economic and so-called “national security” policy regardless of who is in the White House. Our work is cut out for us.

But there are other forces at work, including empathy and gratitude, concern for others, determination to protect the gifts of creation, love of life, and a desire for the common good. I trust that these impulses, based in the Love that abides at the heart of the universe, are more powerful than the forces of hate, and will ultimately prevail. As for me, I will be there in the streets. I don’t yet have a Pussyhat, but I will do what I can to resist harm and support an “orderly transition” to a world of peace, justice, and environmental healing.

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4 thoughts on “Resisting Trump and the Deep State”

The deep state is far more corrosive to our society than any other force we reckon with and it is our entrenched government workers with their own agenda that threatens our American way of life. I hardly recognize this country.